How bad are plastic bags for the environment?
The issue is that the vast majority of plastic bags—except for the paint, the coatings that are on them for the branding—will not biodegrade. These are polyethylene bags for the most part. Polyethylene is basically a solid form of oil—it’s made from the byproducts of oil refineries. The process takes small ethylene molecules, which are two-carbon chains, and links them together into a big long chain. So you have these long chains of carbon atoms that basically are chemically inert, with the exception of under extreme conditions—they are flammable. But they’re not going to age well. There are no bugs that will consume plastic. They’re going to be around a long, long time. That’s the problem. The other side of that question, as I understand it at least, is simply the sheer numbers. Five hundred billion bags are used worldwide each year. Ontarians use 7 million plastic bags a day. So the new bylaw will potentially make a real impact. Absolutely. The other thing it does is bring to the for
